The Freighbor

I have a friend and neighbor who goes by the very special title of "Freighbor"  In my eyes she is like the Martha Stewart of farm life.  (except for the insider trading thing, as far as I know)

I invited her over the other day to checkout my project and share her wisdom with me.  She came by and her eyes lit up and she was, indeed, bubbling over with ideas.  So many ideas that my head began to swim.

In fact she was so full of ideas that she decided to take on her own trailer project.  Not only is she now planning to refurbish her own 1973 Terry (aka Birch Betty) that's been sitting and rotting behind the barn, but she's already looking forward to finding an old used airstream and re-doing one of those.  It kinda makes my project load a bit less overwhelming.  And she really shouldn't poke fun of my random thoughts of weaving some custom cloth for curtains for Miss Maizy.  But seriously, her enthusiasm is catching.

I went by to check out Birch Betty today.  She's not nearly the wreck the freighbor would have me believe but she is so close to the 19' Terry Trailer that I got for the kids and I (after this one) that I started to get a little emotional.

During the visit, among the talk of rot, and paint, and skinning and such there was talk of adult beverages but I really wanted to get home and get to work on Miss Maizy so I declined, with the proviso that once I reached a task goal I would come back for refreshments.  My goal was to remove the rusted-in-place tail lights.  A task that I thought would take several hours.  As it turns out, 5 minutes.  They may have been rusted but it's not like the rusted screws were holding onto anything solid.  They basically just pulled off.

Given that this task only took a few minutes, and that it was still before noon, I thought adult beverages might be a bit premature.  My brother would say "it's 5:00 somewhere!" but I have priorities.

So I started removing the skin of Miss Maizy.  We have decided to do one side at a time.  We watched more YouTube videos so we are practically experts now.  Removing the skin was not very difficult really, but I was left not so sure if I should be happy, or concerned.  The bottom, near the tire is clearly rotted.  All of this wood must be replaced.  Above that, surprisingly, the wood was in good shape.

I continued to remove the skin, from the bottom up when I learned something quite important.  Something I've shared with the Freighbor already so she does not repeat my mistakes.  Ensure that all screws, tacks and staples are removed BEFORE removing any skin.  Otherwise you end up with this deadly sharp piece of aluminum sticking out at eye level while you try to get the top tacks/staples out.

So now, it seems, it may be time for that adult beverage because for the time being, I have all the skin off I plan to take off, as I don't want to compromise the structural integrity before we are ready to start rebuilding the wall.  I still need to remove more stuff from the inside, like the upper bunk and the stove. but we are getting close to going from tear-down to build up - at least on this one side.